Validity of the Child-Adult Medical Procedure Interaction Scale

Short Form

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate the validity of the Child-Adult Medical Procedure Interaction Scale - Short Form (CAMPIS-SF from Blount, Bunke, Cohen & Forbes, 2001) to define children’s, nurse’s and parent’s behaviours during an immunization procedure in a Portuguese health care context. The participant’s behaviours were videotaped, coded and scored using CAMPIS-SF’s categories of children’s’ acute procedural distress and coping, parents’ and nurses’ coping promoting behaviors and distress promoting behaviors. Subjective measures of child distress as well as adult’s perceived child distress were also obtained. Eighty nine children, ranging from 4-6 years old, undergoing immunizations at a county health center, their parents and nurses served as subjects. Results indicated that the validity of the CAMPIS-SF was supported by multiple significant correlations between each one of the categories and with other measures. Interobserver reliability was good to excellent. The CAMPIS-SF is a useful behaviour rating scale to monitor not only children’s acute procedural distress but also their coping and the various adults’ behaviours that significantly influence them, with special relevance to nurse’s behaviour power suggesting the importance of an intervention about which coping behaviours they should demonstrate towards children and their parents.